Regional Co-ordinator: Ottilie Cheetham, [email protected]
Follow us on Twitter: @cfa_se
Follow us on Facebook: @ClassicsForAllinLondon
The Network was set up in 2015 to promote and develop classics in schools across the region, and to give state school pupils the same educational opportunities as their peers in independent schools.
Over the past seven years we have helped teachers from all backgrounds in 360 primary and secondary schools to teach everything from primary school Latin or ancient history to A level classical civilisation or ancient Greek.
All the support, advice and training we offer to schools is free, whether you are a classics specialist keen to brush up your subject knowledge or a primary school teacher with no previous experience of teaching classics.
We tailor all of our support to your needs and can offer 1-1 or group training at your school or online. We also arrange regular teach-meets where you can share ideas and learn from one another. Last year we worked with over 250 teachers and 7,000 students.
In 2020/21, our achievements included supporting 17 new primary schools and 11 new secondary schools in the region, many in areas of socio-economic disadvantage.
The network increased its reach beyond London, introducing Latin as the main foreign language teaching across eight primary schools in Kent through the Tenax Multi-Academy Trust.
Several hundred teachers and pupils attended talks led by Kings College and CfA London as part of the new university access programme, which aims to boost recruitment of pupils from state schools in the South-East to study Classics. Talks on Greek Theatre and Imperial Image, both popular A Level Classical Civilisation modules were attended by audiences of 350 and applications to study Classics at King’s College from state schools have risen by 30%.
We are particularly proud of some of our beacon schools where classics has gone from strength to strength including Kelmscott School in Walthamstow and Bishop Thomas Grant School in Southwark, which both, very unusually, offer Ancient Greek to GCSE level.
In 2020-21, we remain open for online or face to face training. We are particularly keen to hear from any primary schools wanting to improve their teaching of the ancient world or secondary schools keen to start some classics from scratch.
If you want to know more about our work and get involved, please get in touch.
We invite individual or corporate sponsorship of our regional networks. If you would like to find out more, please get in touch at [email protected].
Aliki Drakopoulous, a classics teacher from Whitefriars School, highlights how classical studies are interesting to students from a range of backgrounds, who can apply ideas from their own cultures to stories they hear. Some classics students from Whitefriars School also let us know how classics has impacted them individually.
Harley Aston, aspiring Head of Classics at The Hemel Hempstead School, speaks about her efforts to persuade senior leadership to make room for classics on the curriculum, resulting in a class of 16 pupils studying A Level Ancient History and another 30 starting GCSE Classical Civilisation (out of 50 applicants!)